AirNZ in-flight entertainment system ...

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#757386 8-Feb-2013 16:13

Jaxson:
nathan: isnt it great how when you pay to watch movies you get forced to watch adverts

even if you purchase a $4000 business class seat

Yeah I hate it when I pay $4,000 for a business class seat and have to watch adverts, I get that all the time and it really grates me.

Its almost as bad as the time they didn't peel my grapes! ;-)

dontpanic42

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#757399 8-Feb-2013 16:47

Aspect ratios.
Don't even get me started on the horrible video formatting most IFE systems use, or, rather, the way someone formats the aspect ratio flags when they load it into the system.

Most people probably don't notice/care, but I'm not a fan of fattovision.

dontpanic42

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#757400 8-Feb-2013 16:49

BlueShift:
It's almost as bad as the time they didn't peel my grapes! ;-)

Any time I fly business class (never), I expect my soup to be in a fancy food tower/stack! ;)

nathan

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#757403 8-Feb-2013 17:03

Jaxson:
nathan: isnt it great how when you pay to watch movies you get forced to watch adverts

even if you purchase a $4000 business class seat

Yeah I hate it when I pay $4,000 for a business class seat and have to watch adverts, I get that all the time and it really grates me.

hey look me neither, i wish

my point is, if you were rich and flying business class, spending 4000 to fly to London, i think you'd be feeling nickle & dimed by AirNZ

what's next? Pay extra when you buy your seats to have the no adverts option?

dontpanic42

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#757404 8-Feb-2013 17:06

Last time I flew to Australia (A320 there, 772 back), you had to pay $10 for some content.

Is that the same for longer haul flights, and business class?

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#757418 8-Feb-2013 17:18

dontpanic42: Aspect ratios.
Don't even get me started on the horrible video formatting most IFE systems use, or, rather, the way someone formats the aspect ratio flags when they load it into the system.

Most people probably don't notice/care, but I'm not a fan of fattovision.

I hate it as well, but I know why it happens.

Air NZ can't be bothered formatting content for the different IFE systems. Rockwell Collins is 4:3 but the newer screens are 16:9 so they obviously just stick with doing everthing at 4:3

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NonprayingMantis

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#757420 8-Feb-2013 17:21

nathan:
Jaxson:
nathan: isnt it great how when you pay to watch movies you get forced to watch adverts

even if you purchase a $4000 business class seat

Yeah I hate it when I pay $4,000 for a business class seat and have to watch adverts, I get that all the time and it really grates me.

hey look me neither, i wish

my point is, if you were rich and flying business class, spending 4000 to fly to London, i think you'd be feeling nickle & dimed by AirNZ

what's next? Pay extra when you buy your seats to have the no adverts option?

Maybe they think that if you are rich enough to afford business class you probably either have your own entertainment (ipad etc) or want to sleep or do work on the flight instead of watching movies.

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#757421 8-Feb-2013 17:21

dontpanic42: Last time I flew to Australia (A320 there, 772 back), you had to pay $10 for some content.

Is that the same for longer haul flights, and business class?

No, it's only to Aussie where cheaper seat only fares have to pay $10 to watch movies.

dontpanic42

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#757424 8-Feb-2013 17:27

IKR!

These things are dedicated media players, so you'd imagine they would handle content formatting flags without any trouble.
It would be so easy just to chuck a flag on the video file to tell the player if it's 4:3, or 16:9 etc.

I'm pretty sure the systems have a locked refresh/frame rate as well, because there was noticeable judder/missing frames/held frames on some content. It would be nice if the system changed to the frame rate for the content they were playing.

Bit-rate and de-interlacing also appeared to be an issue with some content.
Wow, now I'm really nit-picking! ;)

nathan

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#757427 8-Feb-2013 17:39

I suppose my analogy of paying to be marketed to with adverts is the same as Sky TV in NZ

When it first launched in NZ as pay-tv there differentiator was no ads, but now all the Sky channels have ads, actually I'm surprised they don't have ads in the middle of movies ;)

NB I'm not and will never be a Sky TV subscriber

nathan

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#757430 8-Feb-2013 17:44

NonprayingMantis:
nathan:
Jaxson:
nathan: isnt it great how when you pay to watch movies you get forced to watch adverts

even if you purchase a $4000 business class seat

Yeah I hate it when I pay $4,000 for a business class seat and have to watch adverts, I get that all the time and it really grates me.

hey look me neither, i wish

my point is, if you were rich and flying business class, spending 4000 to fly to London, i think you'd be feeling nickle & dimed by AirNZ

what's next? Pay extra when you buy your seats to have the no adverts option?

Maybe they think that if you are rich enough to afford business class you probably either have your own entertainment (ipad etc) or want to sleep or do work on the flight instead of watching movies.

I think you give them too much credit ;) its probably simpler than that

Someone decided that all those cattle class passengers sitting there was an additional revenue stream that they could generate money off, in the same way on pacific/trans tasman flights you pay extra for a bag, extra for food/drink, and even extra now to choose where you want to sit (even if you are a frequent customer/high value customer/ gold elite etc)

Probably the IFE system has no way of having different settings for front of the plane compared to back of the plane

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dickytim

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#757561 8-Feb-2013 22:26

wasabi2k: Man.

Back when I used to fly as a kid there was one screen in each section. The movies played at certain times. If you couldn't see it (being a kid) then tough.

If you were lucky you might even get seated near (or god forbid IN) smoking, so you would have to deal with that hideous embedded smoke smell too.

Now you can watch a bunch of movies and tv shows when you want. Sure the screen isn't flash and there is some lag, but who really cares? Once it is playing it is fine.

As for the quality of the system -
1. These systems would probably all need to be certified for use in aircraft = $$$$
2. These systems need to stand up to massive amounts of abuse = $$$$ and limited components
3. These systems are several years old and probably need to be to get overall cost/benefit out of them
4. They all run off a central data store I imagine, I doubt each unit has all the stuff stored on it.

No, iPad minis are not a solution. They have no decent method of shared data access or lockdown suitable for this situation, they have no inputs for the remote and they would not be cost effective in the least. Apple has also been proven to be entirely apathetic to embedded use of their devices. Something to the tune of GFL guys, BYE!

In 5-10 years they will probably be massively better, but I am sure someone will be moaning that their movies are only in 1080p and not 8k and that they can't play Call of Duty Black Ops 7 at 60fps on there.

I think the ipads are the future solution, currently on trans tasmin flights you can hire them on jetstar.

They come preloaded with movies etc.

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#757572 8-Feb-2013 22:37

There are a bunch of issues around wireless devices in the cabin. Currently the bandwidth is not there to support wireless streaming to a significant number of devices in the cabin. The IFE vendors are working on it. There is a crowd in Asia that is offering it but remain to be seen if it actually works in practice.

If the airlines could they would throw out the built in IFE as it is a significant amount of weight to carry around.

Even the motorised screens in the roof that are installed in every few rows are an extremely expensive piece of equipment. Your eyes would water at the cost!

The logistics of getting a sizable amount of content delivered to multiple aircraft running different IFE's is not insignificant.

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#757600 9-Feb-2013 08:22

I too agree that WiFi streaming will be the future. It's starting to happen now, and I see a huge future for it.

Airlines replacing expensive seat back screens and very heavy and hot IFE gear with a simple media server and WiFi infrastructure will deliver them advantages, but not everybody will like them.

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#757602 9-Feb-2013 08:34

nathan: my point is, if you were rich and flying business class, spending 4000 to fly to London, i think you'd be feeling nickle & dimed by AirNZ
?

$4,0000 to fly business class to London? Where is this cheap ticket? You pay double this to get t LAX and back on business these days.

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